An Unholy Alliance in the Senate Is Stopping a Powerful Biden Cabinet Nominee

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Ms. Su’s nomination lasted 281 days, the longest a cabinet-level nominee has waited without a floor vote when the same party controls the White House and the Senate. We need a qualified Secretary of Labor who can impartially enforce the law, properly manage a department, and refrain from partisan activism.” —Sen. Bill Cassidy, ranking Republican member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee

On Dec. 20, the last “working” day of the fabulously ineffective first year of the 118^th Congress, the Senate returned the nomination of acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to the White House, unconfirmed. Republicans, who oppose her unanimously, instructed Biden to pick a different nominee. Biden, the self-proclaimed “most pro-union president in American history,” who also hasn’t had a formal labor secretary in almost a year, has indicated he will not do that, and will renominate her in January.

Su just wrapped up a year in which she served 281 days as the acting labor secretary, unconfirmed in the role, doing the job but without the full title. That’s a record, much to Republicans’ chagrin: the longest period a Cabinet-level official has gone without confirmation during a period of semi-unified government (though the defection of Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and the meaninglessness of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s Democratic Party ID stretch the boundaries of that designation).

“Because she was confirmed by the Senate as deputy labor secretary, she is able to continue serving as acting secretary of labor, where she has performed admirably, and we urge the Senate to take swift action to confirm her as secretary,” a White House spokesperson told the New York Post. “We are going to be very clear—Julie Su will be renominated (as) secretary of labor in the new year. That is something that we are committed to,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Su’s permanent purgatory is the result of an unholy alliance that has formed against the famously pro-worker appointee. Republicans, partly out of a commitment to obstructionism, and partly because of their anti-worker fervor, are all against her. Manchin, who voted to confirm Su as deputy labor secretary in 2021—her record is basically unchanged since that moment—has also come out against Su, as he works shamelessly to bid up the signing bonus on the lobbying contract that he’s extremely likely to sign in a few months.

None of that should have mattered; Democrats have 51 votes in the Senate, and Su only needed 50 to be confirmed. But with Dianne Feinstein holed up in California dying during a major chunk of the year’s official Senate business, Democrats lost the threshold. So Su twisted in the wind, because, apparently, Feinstein’s farewell tour was a higher priority.

Feinstein did indeed die and was replaced, but Su’s fate somehow got no clearer, an indication that Manchin is not the only big-business Democrat who has turned against her.

Who else might be stopping her? Well, gig-work firms hate Su for her past advocacy for rideshare drivers, and Montana Democrat Jon Tester has been a loyal ally of Silicon Valley, where he has gone for regular fundraising sprees. The National Restaurant Association, D.C.’s vanguard group for low wages, also hates Su for her advocacy for fast-food workers; they are known to have the ear of Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, who cast a crucial vote against Biden’s $15 minimum wage proposal in 2021. Kyrsten Sinema loves private equity and seems committed to going out in a blaze of nihilism.

Republicans have tried a number of gambits to depose Su for good. They have brayed about her supposed violations of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, claiming that Su had overstayed her interim welcome. North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, the House Education and Workforce Committee chairwoman, turned to the Government Accountability Office to substantiate that case and knock Su out. But in September, the GAO published a report about Su’s eligibility, finding that she was “lawfully serving as the Acting Secretary” and “that the Vacancies Act’s time limitations on acting service do not apply” to her. Not for nothing, Republicans perfected the art of the acting Cabinet secretary under Donald Trump, who often didn’t bother to confirm or even formally nominate top appointees, some of whom were so objectionable they would have struggled to get the votes.

In three years as president, Biden has largely made good on this pledge to deliver historic support for organized labor. His appearance on the picket line at this year’s United Auto Workers strike was without precedent for a sitting president. Su played an important role in that contract negotiation, which delivered record wins for union autoworkers.

Meanwhile, Republicans have halfheartedly continued to make the case that they are the party of the working class, a claim that looks more and more ridiculous with every passing day. Trump has made fewer and less effective appeals to organized labor on the campaign trail this time around than he did in either of his previous campaigns; Republicans’ new fallback, Nikki Haley, might well be the most virulent anti-labor politician in the entire country.

Re-upping the fight over Julie Su’s nomination for another year will make that distinction clearer than ever. It will also preview what the Senate might look like without Manchin and Arizona independent Kyrsten Sinema: a place held up by a new revolving cast of pro-corporate moderate Dems, quietly undermining the Democratic agenda.